Plainclothes
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: Naoto Shirogane has gotten everyone's attention, as the famous Detective Prince. The media loves her, and her schoolmates are quite taken with her as well. She doesn't care about that. The only person who can't seem to see her as anything more than an annoying kid is Ryotaro Dojima, and he is the only man that she desperately wants to impress. Naoto Shirogane x Ryotaro Dojima.
1. One - Coffee Break

**Author's Note: **I wanted to write this. I wasn't going to, because there was some significant negative feedback about the pairing, but then **Miss Hanamura** said she thought it was a good idea, and I think she's super amazing, so that was really all it took.

**Plainclothes**

**One – Coffee Break**

Naoto Shirogane, the famous Detective Prince, was seated at a temporary desk in the Inaba police station, trying not to let on to anyone that she was struggling to make it through the day.

It was true that real men, especially those hardened and world-weary men who ultimately made themselves into successful detectives, were not supposed to be plagued by childish nightmares. Naoto was aware of this, and she thought that the very awareness of it should be enough o push the nightmares away for good. After all, the first step towards eliminating a problem was identifying it, and she had most certainly identified it.

Unfortunately, she couldn't seem to figure out what the next step was. After viewing the pictures that Ryotaro Dojima and his partners had showed her of the hanging murder victims, Naoto had, unfortunately, been up all night trying to fight off the nightmares, most of which ended up involving horribly mangled women. Some of those women were people she knew, while others were victims of previous cases on which she'd been privileged enough to be called in. She could handle the blood, and she could handle the gore. She could handle the danger and the uncertainty that her chosen profession would always have in store for her.

Unfortunately, she always handled those things a lot better in broad daylight. Once the night came, and the nightmares came with it, everything felt just surreal enough to give her the creeping chills.

"Shirogane," said Dojima, interrupting Naoto's unpleasant train of thought. She looked up and saw him looming over her, frowning in that disapproving way that he usually did whenever he saw her having the nerve to try to get any work done.

"Detective Dojima," murmured Naoto politely. "I'm sorry, I was lost in thought. What can I do for you?"

Dojima grunted something unintelligible, then sighed. "Actually, I think this time it's what I can do for you that counts," he grumbled. "They sent me over here to check up on your progress, and to see if there's anything the Inaba police department has to offer that we haven't already given you by way of help."

"Ah," said Naoto. "I see. No, thank you, I cannot think of anything that I need at this moment."

That, of course, was not entirely true. There were several things that Naoto needed, and one of them, unfortunately, seemed to be a nap. After having been up and down all night with terrible images in her head, she hadn't gotten the requisite amount of sleep that a good detective needed to stay functional and astute, and she was having a great deal of trouble staying awake. This particular kind of human weakness was more frustrating to Naoto than she cared to consider, even to herself, and she frowned angrily down at the page of interrogation notes that she'd been staring at for at least the last ten minutes.

"Yeah?" asked Dojima. "Okay, if you say so. If you ask me, though, you look beat."

Naoto flinched. "I'm not sure what you mean," she muttered. "I assure you that I am perfectly fine."

"Suit yourself," mumbled Dojima, before he wandered off back in the direction of his own desk.

Naoto gritted her teeth. She hated showing off that weak part of herself in front of Detective Dojima, of all people. When she'd first come in here, several of the younger detectives had been impressed by her history of cases solved, or had heard of her on news programs and in local papers. She'd made enough of a name for herself through her past work that most of the Inaba police department ad welcomed her with open arms, relieved to have someone so renowned on the job to assist them.

Dojima, of course, had been a different story. He hadn't been happy at all…but then again, he hadn't been anything. He'd barely even registered her presence, and hadn't been even remotely impressed by her list of past successes.

He treated her like a child, which grated against her nerves, and made it all the more important to her that she find a way to impress him somehow. She would show him, she knew, that she wasn't just a kid to be ignored and pushed around the way he might do his nephew, or those other children that Narukami hung out with. No, Naoto was an experienced professional, and not one to be taken lately. She would, she assured herself, prove this to him, no matter how many late nights or wars against the nightmares that it took to do so. It was a mission, a goal, and Naoto was nothing if not able to accomplish her goals.

It would be easier, she knew, if she could just make herself focus for a few more minutes. Embarrassingly, she was unable to stop herself from letting out a very large and very unmanly yawn.

"Hah…yeah, I know the feeling," muttered Dojima, with just a hint of amusement in his voice as he walked back towards her, carrying two steaming cups of something, one in each hand. "We all have our days like that…actually, I rarely have anything else. Here."

He deposited one of the cups on the desk in front of Naoto. She glanced at it dubiously. It was clearly very hot.

"It's coffee," he told her. "I made it myself….can't stand how those rookies make it, it always ends up tasting like piss when they do it. Don't ask me why." He sighed. "Anyway, go on. It'll help you stay awake to get your work done. It's the secret to my success."

Glancing around at the various frustrated and desperate policemen ranged about the station, Naoto wondered to herself just exactly what success Dojima was referring to. Wisely, she kept that sentiment to herself. "Thank you, sir," she murmured instead. She did not, however, touch the coffee.

Naoto was not a coffee drinker. She didn't care for the taste. Her grandfather had once told her that perhaps she'd develop a taste for it when she got older, which had only infuriated her into trying to force it down…which hadn't worked. She hated the taste of the stuff, and there was no getting around that.

"What's wrong?" asked Dojima. "Come on, it's not like I poisoned it."

She looked up into his face, to see something that terrified her. She'd never seen anything like it before. Unexpectedly, against type, Dojima appeared to be smiling at her, and it wasn't the forced, irritated smile that he'd used to welcome her when he'd found that they'd been selected to work on the same case.

"Th-thank you, sir," she said. Surely, she could finish just one cup of coffee. After all, it wasn't as though the stuff was going to kill her.

Picking up, she sipped hesitantly at it, and then frantically tried to catch herself as she felt her face begin to pucker into an expression of disgust.

There was nothing for it. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and then asked the inevitable question.

"Do you," she queried, "happen to have any more sugar?"


	2. Two - Orders

**Two – Orders**

"Hey, Shirogane," called Dojima, stalking over to where Naoto was making some last minute calculations in someone's abandoned notebook. "We're going."

Naoto blinked up at him surprise. "Pardon me?" she asked.

"The higher-ups want me to try staking out that tofu place in town. You know, the one that's been getting all the buzz lately, ever since Rise Kujikawa came to town."

"Ah, I see." Naoto nodded. "But…wouldn't it be more sensible for Adachi-san to accompany you? Or is there something in particular that requires my attention?"

Dojima scowled. "That Adachi," he muttered. "God knows where the hell he got off to. When I got assigned the stakeout job, I mentioned that I couldn't find him, and they told me to take you, instead. Who knows, maybe that'll piss Adachi off enough to start doing his own damn job for a change."

Naoto wasn't sure how she should feel about that. It was true, of course, that she hadn't seen Dojima's younger partner all day, which wasn't such an uncommon experience. He had quite a reputation for losing himself at the most inconvenient moments, and Naoto had never been impressed by either his work ethic or his deductive skills. Still, she didn't exactly like the idea of being used as a replacement for an absent member of the force. She was an experience investigator, with marketable talents, not a stand in for anyone who happened not to want to show up to work.

Despite her misgivings, though, Naoto couldn't just leave this job undone. It was certainly true that Rise Kujikawa, who had only moved to Inaba within the past couple of days, was likely to be a target for the serial murderer who had been walking Inaba's streets totally unhindered of late. Staking out the tofu shop, while somewhat of an amateur move, wasn't necessarily a bad idea.

"Of course," murmured Naoto, getting up from her seat. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go arrange things. I'll join you in a few moments."

It didn't take her long to organize her notes, and to locate the jacket she'd brought to fight off any of the unpredictable weather changes that seemed to be a regular occurrence in Inaba. As soon as she'd collected herself, she returned briskly to the desk where she'd left Dojima waiting for her.

"Oh, that was fast," remarked Dojima, looking almost pleased. "Good, let's get going." He led her out of the station, and climbed into the driver's seat of the police car that was parked just out front.

"Um…excuse me," hazarded Naoto, "but, wouldn't it make more sense for us to travel in a slightly less conspicuous vehicle? If we are attempting to surprise the culprit in the midst of an attack, it would be unfortunate if he recognized us or saw us coming in time to make his escape."

Dojima frowned. "Yeah, obviously," he grumbled. "I left my car back at my place, though. Walking over there will just waste time."

"Not as much time as we will waste if we carelessly sacrifice our chance to apprehend the suspect," argued Naoto. "The pros of using the other car massively outweigh the cons…if you don't mind my suggesting it, sir." She added that last part with a sudden recognition that Dojima, much older than her and technically more experienced as well, might not enjoy listening to a sixteen year old trying to make helpful suggestions. Even if she was right, and he had to know that she was, he wasn't going to like feeling like a fool. People, Naoto reflected, were always so much more complicated to work with than she'd like. Facts were easy to arrange and combine, once she had them all in hand. People were irrational, and that could get messy. It would do well for her to tread more carefully in the future.

She'd expected him to glare at her, or even to lose his temper, but instead, Dojima just sighed.

"Yeah," he said. "That's probably for the best. You'd better keep up, we're gonna have to gun it."

With that, he got back out of the car, and set off quickly in another direction. Naoto, on her slightly shorter legs, had to quicken her pace to follow him. For a much older man, Dojima could really move when he wanted to.

"There have been a hell of a lot of people hanging around that Marukyu place recently," Dojima remarked as they sped down the street, presumably in the direction of his house. "So many of them are perverts with cameras…that'll make it much harder to catch the guy we're really after. Honestly, of all the times for some hot new celebrity to come to town, this is the worst. Hasn't she been watching the news, lately? She had to know that Inaba's not as safe a place to live as it used to be."

"As I understand it," said Naoto, "Miss Kujikawa's grandmother runs the Marukyu tofu shop. Family is a pressing consideration, even in dangerous times like these. Perhaps Miss Kujikawa felt that her grandmother would e safer with someone else around to help look after both her and the shop."

Dojima didn't' say anything for a moment. Then, he grunted thoughtfully, and Naoto saw him rubbing one hand anxiously at the back of his neck. "Huh," he mumbled."Yeah, I hadn't really thought of that. Guess after all these years of doing the job, I've stopped looking for the good things in people. They're so rarely there. You're young. You can still expect the best. That's good, but…" he trailed off, and Naoto found herself wondering just what the end of that sentence might have been.

"It's not naiveté," she told him, assuming that his comments had been working in that direction. "Every person has the capacity for multiple actions, both good and bad. Being able to recognize all of the possibilities innate in people's minds is just part of what it means to be a good detective."

Dojima gave her a sharp look, and Naoto suddenly realized that she'd just done it again. She'd essentially been talking down to a forty five year old man, and the look on his face told her that this time, it really had pissed him off.

There was nothing for it. She knew that she'd have to backtrack, and fast. "My apologies, Dojima-san," she told him, as politely as she could. "I am unused to conversing with professionals of your caliber. I did not mean to suggest that you were unfamiliar with the art of detection. Please forgive that careless comment of mine."

Dojima nodded for a moment, and then, unexpectedly, he smiled.

"Heh," he muttered. "Nice save, Shirogane."


	3. Three - Roadblocks

**Three – Roadblocks**

There was an alarmingly large throng of people surrounding the Marukyu tofu shop when Dojima and Naoto arrived in Dojima's slightly less conspicuous personal car. Naoto reflected that she'd been wrong. It hadn't been necessary for them to go and get the other car. The press of bodies was so thick that any person or vehicle would have been easily lost to view within it. Staying out of sight was not going to be a problem for either of the two detectives. Catching sight of any suspicious persons or activities, however, would be equally difficult.

"Crap," muttered Dojima, as he and Naoto, having decided to abandon the car, pushed and shoved towards the shop entrance. "This is even worse than I thought."

"Crimes are the most common in crowds such as this one," agreed Naoto darkly. "The mob mentality that this sort of single-minded proximity creates leads far too easily to desperation and violence."

"Yeah." Dojima sighed. "And that's the kind of stuff I hate the most. You have no idea how many petty thefts and boob grabs I have to deal with every time there's some big Junes sale that has people lined up or packed around the entrance doors. It's like the whole town suddenly turns into a latent crime ring…and celebrities are ten times worse. Look, there are even little kids here." He pointed at a pair of small children who were standing on either side of a large woman, holding each of her hands, and jumping up and down excitedly in hopes of getting a glimpse over the heads of the others.

"This kind of environment can be dangerous for children," murmured Naoto. "They could be crushed in the throng."

"And for what?" asked Dojima. "For some kiddie celebrity who's exhausted from doing too many diet ads? Maybe I just don't get it. My daughter Nanako loves Risette. It was all I could do to keep her from insisting on coming with me, today."

Naoto frowned. "I do not take much interest in the lives of celebrities, whether real or fictional," she informed him. "Except in cases where a significant theft or tragedy requires my services, I try to avoid them."

"Huh, really?" Dojima sounded surprised. "I would have thought you'd have been as into that stuff as the next guy. Most kids your age are, right? The glamorous lives of the rich and the famous." He scowled. "Then again, I guess you're a kind of celebrity yourself."

Naoto bristled a little bit at that. "Please," she said coldly, "do not lump me in or associate me with a bunch of greedy and oversexed teenage idols. I am recognized for the legitimate work that I do in the service of justice. There is little similarity between my accomplishments and the so-called accomplishments of a bikini-model who makes a living out of being physically desirable."

For some reason, that made Dojima laugh. "I have to say, I'm impressed. Most fifteen year old boys don't worry too much about Rise Kujikawa's professional merits. Hell, I think even Adachi's got her pin-up book somewhere…not that I'm saying that's a good thing." He sighed. "Sometimes I wonder about that guy…looking at racy pictures of fifteen year old girls on his lunch break…"

Naoto wasn't really listening, or thinking about Adachi-san's perverted tendencies. She was caught up on something else Dojima had said. "Most fifteen year old boys," he explained, were interested in Rise's attractive figure. That, of course, was true, and made perfect sense. It was also one of the things that frequently worried Naoto, when it came to the issues surrounding her assumed masculine identity. She'd successfully convinced the world at large, and had almost convinced herself that she was, for all intents and purposes, a man. Successful detectives were men. Most of Japan's valued heroes were men. There were few women of any kind, in fact, who had achieved the level of social standing and recognition that Naoto craved and strived for.

Unfortunately, despite all her best efforts to the contrary, Naoto did not did prefer women. An unfortunate and disastrously ended encounter with a young woman at her former high school had left Naoto in very little doubt that she was as straight as a dowel rod, and that, when given the choice, had a strong sexual preference for the biologically opposite sex.

That, of course, would have been considered highly normal by society, assuming she revealed herself to be a woman. Society expected that women should be interested in men, and that men should be interested in women.

What, however, would Naoto do with the fact that she, a man, was interested in other men? There were very few homosexual detectives, either in fact or fiction as far as Naoto could remember. There was a ridiculous and illogical stigma attached to the very idea of homosexuality, one that might make it very difficult for Naoto to find cases willing to involve or include her.

For most of her life, it hadn't been a problem. Prior to the age of puberty, Naoto had simply ignored most women, and had become involved with them only when absolutely necessary for the sake of her work.

Recently, however, Naoto had begun to feel strange stirrings in the more feminine places of both her body and mind, and had even caught herself remarking inwardly that certain men were particularly attractive.

This, of course, would have to stop. Her identity would be destroyed and her careful cover blown if she were to become intimately involved, even briefly or casually, with another man.

"Well, don't worry about it," Dojima was saying in an annoyingly condescending way. "Just remember, work isn't everything. Someday you might meet someone who's attractive enough to take your mind off of it for a while."

As Naoto opened her mouth to protest both his tone and the subject matter, she saw his shoulders droop slightly, and a vague faraway look came into his usually shrewd if tired eyes.

"Dojima-san?" she asked.

"Huh?" Shaking his head as if to clear it, he glanced down blearily at her. "What? What's wrong?"

Naoto wasn't sure. "You…you looked tired for a moment, sir. I apologize if my reflections have wearied you. Perhaps I've been overly familiar, foisting my personal opinions on you in the midst of an investigation."

"No, it's not that," mumbled Dojima. "I was just thinking about someone I used to know. She was the one who told me that work wasn't everything. It can't fill the holes where somebody special used to be. Maybe I take it back. Maybe it's better to stay away from that stuff. Work doesn't hurt. Women do."

Naoto was already aware that Ryotaro Dojima had lost his wife only a year or two prior to Naoto's own arrival in Inaba. He lived, she'd been informed, with his young daughter, Nanako, and, at the moment, with a nephew who was the first son of his older sister. Having lost her own parents at an early age, Naoto imagined that she had some sense of what that loss might have been like for him.

It was strange, she suddenly realized. For all the condescension and the gruff and growling attitude, Ryotaro Dojima suddenly seemed to Naoto like a disturbingly accurate parody of herself, or of what she might become in twenty years. Desperately dedicated to his work, almost to the point of distraction, he pushed away the personal ties in favor of the slightly less harrowing and more relaxing factual world of the hard-boiled sleuth. In many ways, Naoto had spent most of her life taking exquisite pains to craft herself into the person that Dojima had become quite by accident. So many people spoke of him as though he was a man without a heart, exactly the sort of calculating machine that Naoto herself wanted so badly to be.

Lost in that unexpected reflection, Naoto stumbled against the outstretched leg of an eager young man who was standing near the front of the crowd, and had to catch herself quickly to keep from falling over and being lost in the crush of people. Suddenly, she felt someone supporting her roughly by the arm, and then she was pulled back on to her feet by a coarse hand that turned out to be attached to Dojima, who gave her a stern, disapproving look.

"Watch where you're going, Shirogane," he muttered. "If you get hurt on assignment, all that gets me is a hell of a lot of extra paperwork."

"My apologies," murmured Naoto, feeling flustered for a moment. Was it just her imagination or had she, very briefly and fleetingly, enjoyed the feeling of that supportive contact?

That of course, was a very unmanly thing for a self-made detective to think, she told herself. Clearing her throat, she stood up straight and tall, and tried to push the remarkable revelations of the last few minutes out of her mind.


	4. Four - Stakeout

**Four – Stakeout**

Most of the other men that Naoto had been privileged enough to work with or for over the years had protested at one time or another that they hated stakeouts. Stakeouts, they always insisted, were a boring, monotonous waste of time and energy. Stakeouts were usually long, grueling, disappointing, tiresome, and infrequently resulted in arrest, or even in the gain of pertinent information. The only thing those other people seemed to think could possibly come from a stakeout was a head cold, unexpected joint pain, and a story of woe to be told around the lunch table during the next day's station recap.

Naoto, on the other hand, tended to enjoy stakeouts. During the course of an active investigation, she found very little time for patient thought, as her clients and coworkers were so often hounding her with questions, commentary, and insistence that she be active non-stop. They wanted her involved in every aspect of the foolish little runnings around that other people seemed to think were the meat of all detective work. They expected constant judgments and discoveries, to the point that Naoto was so busy placating them that she had very little time to do much of what she considered to be her actual job. Stakeouts, on the other hand, which were by their very nature a stealthy and unobtrusive activity, provided more than enough time for reflection and contemplation, which could lead in turn to the basics of the deductive process. Naoto enjoyed stakeouts, because could use them to spend some time in her own head, and only when inside her own head could she come up with the brilliant strokes of reasoning that had made her and the entire Shirogane family famous in their line of work.

As the sky had begun to darken and night had finally come, more and more disappointed Risette admirers had begun to drift away from the storefront of the tofu shop. By the time the stars were out, only Naoto and Dojima remained in the vicinity. In what appeared to Naoto to be an attempt to act naturally, Dojima tucked himself into a corner beneath a streetlight and pulled a book out of his bag, which he proceeded to pretend to read.

Naoto had to bite her lip to keep back what would almost certainly have been an unwelcome criticism. Dojima was the sort of man who exuded a kind of tense professionalism that was almost tangible from several feet away. Just trying to fit into his surroundings made him appear all the more uncomfortably out of place, especially when his usual appearances at night in the shopping district were for purposes of rounding up curfew-breaking students, and dealers selling illegal substances to minors and adults alike. It didn't help that the book which Dojima was reading was so obviously new that Naoto could see from where she was standing that he'd never even broken the spine. For some reason, despite her frustration at Dojima's lack of fitness for a stealth assignment, these observations made Naoto smile. There was something predictable about Ryotaro Dojima that helped her relax, just a little bit, in the wake of all of the recent trials and unexpected pitfalls.

Abruptly, Dojima looked away from his book, and met Naoto's eyes. Realizing she'd been staring, she did her best not to let slip an embarrassed, feminine flush.

"What?" asked Dojima. "Is there something on my face? Don't zone out on me, now."

"No, it's not that," muttered Naoto, reaching around inside her mind for a suitable course of conversation. "I was just curious what it is that you are reading."

Glancing down at the book in his hand, Dojima ran his eyes over the cover page as though seeing it for the first time. "Yeah," he agreed. "Me too. What is this, uh…'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes?' This much be Adachi's idea of a joke." With a snort of derision, he slammed the book shut again.

Naoto frowned at him. "You aren't a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?" she inquired. "Haven't you read the stories of Sherlock Holmes before?"

"Nah," mumbled Dojima. "I'm too busy to do much reading. Besides, isn't this a kids book?"

That left Naoto wide open, and she'd been so busy thinking about Dojima's unfitness for his environment that she'd been distracted and hadn't seen it coming. Of course, someone like Dojima would look askance at what even many modern Literature professors considered to be a children's story. The stories of Sherlock Holmes had, indeed, been used to put many rowdy children to bed at night, and Naoto herself had enjoyed the exploits of Holmes when she'd been a young woman, dreaming of being a grown man. Still, even if they'd once been a part of her youth, the daring deductions of Holmes himself still left Naoto reeling from envious excitement, thrilled by the literary heights that Holmes had risen to, and by the possibility that she, too, someday, might be almost as great. It had been stories like those of Holmes, and many of his followers and literary descendants that had been the final push in swaying Naoto towards following in the footsteps of the family business.

Still, she knew, none of that would hold any interest for Dojima, whose recent reading experiences probably didn't extend beyond police reports, and the morning paper.

Hoping to divert the conversation in a less revealing direction, Naoto frowned. "Adachi-san selected your book for you?" she asked. "You seem to bring him up a lot in conversation. You two must be very close."

Dojima snorted. "He's my partner," he informed her, and there was an exciting combination of derision, annoyance, fondness, and amusement in his tone that left Naoto totally unsure if she'd read him right or not. "Actually, now that you mention it, he probably has read this book. He's exactly the kind of guy to go for the cheap adventure stuff."

Naoto bristled. "I suggest you avoid criticizing the book before you've actually read it," she muttered.

Dojima looked surprised."Oh, excuse me," he said. "I didn't realize you were a fan."

Well, thought Naoto, it was out now. What kind of a man was she if she wasn't willing to stand up for an opinion she held so dear? "Many of the detectives and policemen that I have encountered in my time in Inaba," she told him quietly, "could learn a great deal from the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. Although there are, indeed, a number of those 'cheap adventures' that you mention, there are also a great many instances in which Holmes himself has to exercise exceptional judgment and tact."

"Touché," said Dojima, with a laugh in his voice that almost sounded as though he were impressed. "Sorry. You're right. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it."

Naoto assumed that they were finished debating the merits or lack thereof available in the Holmes canon, and was therefore surprised when Dojima opened the book to the first page, and began reading with what appeared to be earnest attention.

"Dojima-san?" asked Naoto hesitantly.

Dojima shook his head. "Enough, Shirogane," he snapped. "You said you wanted me to read the dam thing, didn't you? Well, no, maybe you didn't say so, but I figure you'll quit accusing me of being a tactless thug if I give it a try. So, I'm reading. Now shut up."

Naoto shut up. She watched as Dojima slowly mouthed the words of the text as he read, as though trying to force his imagination into keeping time with the written page.

Before she knew it, Naoto had sat down beside him, and was reading along. Even on the third, fourth, or fifth read, there would always be magic in Holmes.


	5. Five - Nightfall

**Five – Nightfall**

Naoto wasn't sure exactly how much time passed between them. The more engrossed she became in the story, the less attention she found herself paying to her surroundings, which was distinctly unprofessional. It was only when she dragged her focus back from the land of 221B Baker Street that she realized how close she was now sitting to Dojima, so close that their shoulders had been brushing against each other as they'd read along on the same page.

Naoto's whole body suddenly felt hot. She scrambled to her feet, and made a big show of looking over the immediate surroundings, if only to avoid meeting Dojima's eyes.

"Well, I see what you mean," he said, closing the book and laying it down on the sidewalk beside him. "It's not bad. It's definitely cute, but…I don't know." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm jaded, but it's not for me."

Naoto refrained from commenting on the fact that they had somehow managed to reach page forty-seven of a book that Dojima supposedly wasn't enjoying.

"I guess it's something that comes with experience," he mused, around Naoto's inner monologue. "I mean, the real world just doesn't work this way. Nobody's this good, and no criminals are this careless. The cases aren't that easy. In the real world, nobody drops a cigarette right next to the body, or type-writes the suicide note on a machine that can be easily traced. Actually, nobody type-writes anything anymore. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe technology was designed for the criminals. Anyway, like I said, it's a fun story, but…" He shrugged.

"I understand," murmured Naoto. "Yes, I can see why the methods of Sherlock Holmes might not be as applicable to modern detective work. Perhaps," she admitted, "I am biased in my choice of literature. My mother and father used to read me the exploits of Holmes and Watson when I was just a little gi-!"

She stopped herself before finishing the word, clapping one hand over her mouth in alarm. Luckily, Dojima didn't appear to have noticed. He wasn't even looking at her. Naoto breathed out her quietest sigh of relief. For some reason, there was something about this man that kept throwing her off of her well-rehearsed guard. He was so unremarkable, so expected. Perhaps that was the very thing that set her at her ease. He had no pretenses about him, and everything that came from him was natural and un-rehearsed. Naoto admired it and envied it. It was something that, based on her current series of complicated personal lies, she could never have. He was a plainclothes detective, she mused, in every sense of the word. His clothes were plain, his speaking was plain, and his attitude was plain. She liked all of that. She liked how trustworthy all of that made him feel to her. Naoto couldn't be trustworthy, because by the very nature of the game she played, she wasn't honest, and dishonesty negated the possibility of trust.

"Your father, huh?" asked Dojima. "What does he think of all this?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know," murmured Naoto. "He passed when I was very young, as did my mother."

There wasn't any sadness when she said it. Naoto was sure that she'd long ago come to terms with the death of her parents, and had taught herself to ward off those twinges of grief or regret when she spoke of them. Normally, she felt only pride when she remembered how brave and talented her parents had been. Perhaps it was the effect that Dojima's presence was having on her that made the note of sorrow creep back into her heart as she told him the same tragic story that she'd told so many people before, without shedding a tear in the instance.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Dojima quietly. Naoto valiantly resisted the urge to move closer to him.

"There was an accident," she said. "Ever since then, I've been living with my grandfather, who has been very kind to me, and has taught me everything that he knows about his work. Without him, I would never have reached the level of success that I maintain today." She meant every word that said, and Naoto's fondness for her grandfather swelled up inside her as she talked about him.

But, thought Naoto, in the darker and more unguarded parts of her mind, now there are no more bedtime stories.

"I don't get that," Dojima was saying. "I don't get how your grandpa could let you do this stuff. So, he's been a detective his whole life? He knows how dangerous that can be. Why doesn't he try to stop you?"

Naoto frowned. "Because…I am helpful to him," she said. "I am able to assist him in his work. It is beneficial to have me along." She was sure that was true. Her grandfather had told her so many times.

"That's not what I mean," insisted Dojima. "You can be all the help in the goddamn world, but if something happens to you on the job, that's on his head. Having a little extra help isn't worth losing family. I don't understand people who don't think that way. I don't think I want to, either."

Naoto wanted to be offended on her grandfather's behalf. She bristled at Dojima's insinuation that her guardian had not taken good enough care of her, which she was positive had never been the case. She loved her grandfather, and without him she might still be a miserable, lonely little girl, with no friends and nothing to do with her abundant spare time.

Still, Dojima had a point, and her detective's brain had recognized that before her emotional side had been able to negate it. It was true that the work he did was dangerous, and that she was regularly placing herself in harm's way by emulating him. Many other parental or family figures would have openly objected to that.

"It is…complicated," she muttered. "My grandfather recognizes that I need to be useful."

"Yeah," countered Dojima, "and that's great, but I don't care. Then again," he sighed, "maybe it doesn't matter. I bet your grandpa knows he couldn't do any good if he tried talking you out of it. I know that nephew of mine's gotten mixed up in this case somehow…and I only wish I could prove it. If I had anything concrete to base that on, I could keep him locked up in the house and out of the way. As it is, all I can do is worry." He grumbled something under his breath. "It's making me old. Not that I needed the help."

Naoto opened her mouth to respond to that, but stopped and whirled around as she thought she heard a rustling sound behind her. It was so dark now that she couldn't immediately locate the source of the noise, and as she scanned the area, she heard Dojima jump to his feet behind her.

Naoto took a step forward, but Dojima suddenly interposed himself between her and the direction that the noise had come from. Staring up at his broad back which was now firmly blocking her way, Naoto bit her lip. "What are you doing" she asked.

"What your grandfather probably should have done years ago," mumbled Dojima. "Maybe it's time you finally had someone looking out for you."

There were strange stirrings in the pit of Naoto's stomach. She wasn't sure if they came from anger, frustration, or something else entirely…but she was hoping beyond all hope for the former.


	6. Six - Culprit

**Six – Culprit**

For a few tense moments, the air was still again, and Naoto couldn't detect any sign that she and Dojima weren't alone. Then, just as she was beginning to believe that she'd imagined that first noise, a flash of color appeared on the edge of her vision, and she spun to face it.

"That way," growled Dojima. He and Naoto crept a few steps closer to the tofu shop, and Naoto, drawing her weapon as silently and unobtrusively as she could, followed suit.

As they moved with aching slowness closer and closer to the source of the sound, Naoto's analytical mind flashed her a profile of what sort of killer she was likely to be facing. This individual had murdered two women, and may have begun a series of kidnappings after that. Yukiko Amagi and Kanji Tatsumi didn't seem, upon first inspection, to have too many things in common, other than the connections that their mothers both shared with Mayumi Yamano. Naoto had dismissed that long ago as purely circumstantial. No, she was sure, there was something about the two women and those two high school students that, once identified, would be the key to figuring out what made this criminal tick. It would be a man, certainly, since so many indicators seemed to suggest that the killer was a person of great physical strength. After all, he had hung the victims up on telephone poles, something that would require athleticism and physical force, which even Naoto had to admit was more likely to be possessed by a male than by a female. There was also the fact that all of the victims had been either women, or essentially children. The killer, then, would have a power complex, a need for overcompensation, or something that pushed him towards picking on the weak, rather than those who could fend for themselves. He had great physical strength, then, but he feared those who might be strong enough to physically oppose him. Interesting, thought Naoto. It seemed almost a contradiction in terms, which intrigued her as such little human mysteries often did.

This instant profile of the killer, however, did present something of a problem. A man of great physical strength, but of subsequent mental weakness, lacking in confidence but clearly focused enough in drive and purpose would be a very dangerous creature. Naoto cringed inwardly at the unfortunate realization that she, a fifteen year old girl would be no reasonable match for the man that she had just painted such a vivid mental picture of. While she may have had the deductive skills of a much older and more experienced man, she was physically frail and feminine, which was one of the very reasons that she knew so many hardened veterans of the Inaba police department would have had trouble taking her seriously if they knew the truth. Idly, and somewhat irrelevantly, she wondered if that would be how Dojima would feel. Would he look down on her for being a girl? Would he assume that a lack of masculine muscle would make her less of a force to be reckoned with?

Moreover, queried the deeper and more unsavory parts of Naoto's mind, if he did think those things, would he be correct?

Another crunching noise broke through the silence, and Naoto stopped so abruptly that she stumbled right into Dojima's side. He caught her as she teetered unsteadily, in the process of regaining her balance.

"Focus, Shirogane," he muttered.

Naoto bit her lip.

Abruptly, the noise and movement that they'd both been following stopped.

"Shit," mumbled Dojima. "He made us…"

Then, suddenly, in a flash of color and confusion, something or someone darted right by them, so close that Naoto felt her sleeve jostled by the breeze that the figure created as he made a desperate attempt at escape. In the same instant, Naoto and Dojima both lunged forward and made a grab for the fleeing shape, only to end up jostling each other, and eventually impeding their joint charge. Dojima tread on Naoto's foot, and she jerked back, slamming into his chest with her elbow as she did so. He grunted in pain, and Naoto whirled around to see how badly she'd injured him. He was already trying to step through the space where she'd just been, and they both ended up tangled in a tumbled heap on the floor, listening to the sounds of the would-be culprit escaping through the night.

"Ugh," groaned Dojima. "We lost him."

Naoto was torn between two options. If she managed to extract herself from Dojima, she might be able to set off in pursuit, but in this darkness and without a thorough enough knowledge of the territory, it was likely to end up as a fruitless search. Besides, Dojima was still down, and it would never do, she reminded herself, to abandon a comrade, even for the sake of success in her quest.

The tiny, treacherous part of her mind insisted gleefully to Naoto's more rational thinking brain that she was now just making excuses to spend a little bit of extra time with the police detective. Firmly, Naoto ordered her unwelcome, girlish thoughts to shut up and return to their regularly scheduled duties of being neither seen nor heard.

"Jeez, Shirogane," muttered Dojima, shaking his head and giving her a rueful little chuckle of impressed surprise. "You have some wicked elbows…I'd hate to see what you could do to the enemy with those things."

"Are you hurt, Dojima-san?" asked Naoto. "I…am terribly sorry about the confusion. In the dark, I didn't realize that we were-!"

"Nah," said Dojima. "Forget it. Like you said, it was too dark for us to get much a handle on him anyway, and we can't just assault an unarmed man for no reason. Wasn't much we could have done. At least he's gone, now. Can't do any harm if he's keeping his distance. Maybe that's enough for one night."

Dojima fell silent for a moment, and then cleared his throat.

"You can, uh, get up now," he said.

Naoto looked down, and discovered that she was still essentially lying against Dojima's chest. With the alarm bells sounding a warning through her skull, Naoto rolled off of him so quickly and in such a panic that she was almost surprised to feel herself hit the ground.

"I-I'm sorry," she began, trying not to let her skin tingle where the contact with Dojima still lingered. "When I stumbled, I must have-!"

Through and around her protestations, Naoto was aware of one thing that was starting to fill up all of her room for focus and make it hard to maintain a level of rational thought.

Dojima, she realized, didn't only act like her ideal, hard-boiled detective…he was built like it, as well. Not that she'd ever had the chance to think about it before, or would have dared to even if she'd found the opportunity, but the man was in decent shape, especially for a gentleman of his age, which she judged to be somewhere in the realm of age forty three to forty six. Most men his age weakened with lack of exercise and muscle use, but from that brief and accidental moment of direct connection with Dojima's physique, Naoto was certain that he wasn't the average middle aged man.

All of a sudden, she realized exactly what it was that she was thinking about, and sprang to her feet, taking as many steps away from him as she possibly could without risking impoliteness.

"Ah," she murmured confusedly. "Well, then, if our work here is done for the night, then perhaps we should…"

Dojima shook his head. "That wasn't necessarily the guy," he reminded her. "We'll have to stick it out. If the real killer comes along after we tuck in for the night, it'll be our fault when we wake up tomorrow morning and find a teenage girl's body hanging somewhere in the shopping district…"

He sat back down, apparently lost in his own brooding thoughts about hanging bodies. Naoto, aware that her thinking should be going along the same lines, was both frustrated and relieved to see that, somehow, Dojima still seemed to be totally oblivious of the strange and inopportune sensations he was causing in his younger companion. How, she wondered, could he be so collected? Moments later, she asked herself how on earth it was that she could be so flustered and unhinged by one entirely accidental physical moment.

"Hey, you okay?" asked Dojima, cutting through Naoto's racing mind. "You're breathing funny. Did you sprain something when you fell, just now? Damn, that's the last thing we need…"

"No," Naoto assured him stoically. "No, sir, I'm fine. There's nothing the matter at all."

Attempting to recollect herself by sheer force of will, she reminded her rampant hormones that this behavior was inappropriate, unseemly, and poorly timed.


	7. Seven - Long Walk Home

**Seven – Long Walk Home**

As they trudged back through the night together, Naoto and Dojima had to worry less about being discreet and unnoticed. The stakeout was over, they'd lost the battle, and it was time to throw in the towel until a new opportunity presented itself. On one hand, Naoto was frustrated and annoyed that they hadn't managed to catch the culprit, and she was embarrassed that it was due in some part to her having stumbled over Dojima and impeded his charge.

On the other hand, however, she was a little bit relieved. The evening had been such a maelstrom of complicated emotions and sensations that it was nice, for a moment, not to have to worry about keeping track of a criminal on top of mastering heartache.

"Nanako's gonna be mad at me," Dojima muttered with a sigh. "I guess I should hope she won't still be awake when I get home, but…she always hears the door open, even from her bedroom. Her Big Bro was supposed to put her to bed at nine, but I'm not holding my breath."

Naoto had only ever seen Dojima's daughter once, when Nanako and her cousin Yu had come to visit the station after Nanako's school let out for the day. Nanako, thought Naoto, was a bright, happy, vigorous little girl, and it had surprised her to see just how much Nanako differed in temperament from the taciturn and grouchy Detective Dojima.

Now, however, Dojima's grumblings about Nanako's bedtime made Naoto smile involuntarily. "She takes after her father, I see," murmured Naoto. "Stubborn." She could just imagine that familiar, disgruntled expression on the face of Dojima's little daughter.

Naoto was not, as it happened, usually a kid person. She just wasn't sure how to connect with them, and she found their childish whining offensive and irritating in every degree. Still, the idea of Dojima's personality planted in a tinier vessel was charming.

"Heh," mumbled Dojima. "Stubborn is right, although…I think she gets that from her mother. She takes after her mother more than me, anyway."

"I would imagine that must be difficult for you," murmured Naoto, before realizing that she'd said those words out loud.

There was silence between them for a moment, before Dojima finally spoke up. When he did, he sounded thoughtful, rather than irate.

"I can't decide if it gets easier or harder every day," he admitted. "Maybe both."

Emboldened by his failure to reprimand her, Naoto pushed her luck a little bit farther. "What was she like?" she asked hesitantly.

Dojima bit his lip. "I guess she was probably like most other people," he admitted. "She was more than enough for me, anyway. She was brave…and beautiful. Not beautiful like the idols in those creepy teenage magazine ads, either. Chisato was beautiful the way a real woman can be beautiful, after years of facing the world at its worst and coming out on top anyway." Unexpectedly, he smiled. "She was gorgeous when she was angry, except when she was angry at me. That…happened a lot, now that I think about it." He laughed a self deprecating little laugh, and seemed to be off in his own world, with a woman who'd passed away long ago, living at a little house on the corner of memory lane.

Naoto felt some unpleasant feeling thud hard into the pit of her stomach. There was something so faraway about Dojima now, something distant and mystifying that came from a place and a time that Naoto had never been. It made her feel young and inexperienced, which irritated her and pricked at those slightly less confident parts of her soul that were still reeling resentfully from adult jibes about how she was a "kid wonder," or a "junior sleuth."

Yet, even though she knew that they were all wrong, and that she had the intellectual skills to leave all of them in the cognitive dust, Naoto felt small and inadequate around Dojima. The perverse desire to have him notice her for the merits that he thus far had refused to admit had been growing by the hour, and now Naoto was embarrassed and annoyed to realize that the back of her mind was shouting at him and hopping up and down like an impatient four year old in a candy store. That part of her wanted to beg him, "Look at me! Look at me! Look what I can do!"

"Shirogane," muttered Dojima.

"Yes?" Naoto tried not to jump when she heard him say her name. What on earth had gotten into her? This was no way for a cool-headed and collected professional to behave.

"How come you aren't in school?" he asked. "You'd be a grade below my nephew, right? Kids your age should be in school. I don't care how much of a prodigy you are, you'll never get ahead in life if you skip out on your education."

Naotos' heart sank. "Not, of course, that an education isn't an important part of any detective's experience," muttered Naoto. "And of course, I do value the academic achievements of those in my age group. School, however, has a rigorous and somewhat arbitrary schedule that would interfere irrevocably with my detective work…I'm afraid that it is out of the question."

"Didn't you go to school before?" insisted Dojima. "Before you came to Inaba, I mean."

Naoto reflected disagreeably on the number of schools she'd briefly attended, shifting back and forth between assisting her grandfather with cases in many parts of Japan, while still attempting to navigate the vigorously unpleasant social stigmas associated with her academic environment. No, she told herself, school was a painful and unpleasant necessity that she'd be eager to avoid if given half the chance. After all, she didn't need to go to school to educate herself, and books were available in many local libraries. School required her to associate far too frequently with those that people like Dojima might erroneously consider to be her "peers," when in fact they were typically only sexually-obsessed packages of over-emotional nonsense that just happened to ahev been on the earth for as many years as she had done.

"I greatly prefer the learning environment provided by the professional workplace," said Naoto, after carefully selecting the words from a series of conversational options. "I find that I can learn more from my work than from any teacher-conducted lecture in a typical classroom."

"Eh." Dojima shrugged. "I don't know…I mean, yeah, I see what you're saying, but...what about what's left of your youth? You'll miss out on a lot of experiences this way. If I was your father, I'd-!"

"Please," interrupted Naoto, her insides rankling and rejecting the idea of Dojima as a father figure almost before the words had made their way out of his mouth. "There's…no need for that. I recognize the merits of your point."

They stalked the rest of the way back to the station in silence, with Naoto cursing her age and her stature over and over, with more internal vigor as they got closer and closer to their destination.

It was always like this, she thought. The people whom she would have been honored to call her peers and compatriots could never see her as anything more than a troublesome child.

For some reason, she had thought that Dojima might have been able to see things differently. Perhaps, rather, she'd just hoped that he would.

His attitude felt to Naoto unreasonably like a betrayal.


	8. Eight - Streetlight

**Eight – Streetlight**

Dojima drove Naoto back towards her grandfather's house in the car they'd finally agreed to take to the scene of the stakeout. The stars had come out, and Naoto gazed out the window at the sky that she could see much better from Inaba than she'd ever been able to do in the city. It was a shame, she thought, that she'd never spent any time studying what the stars meant, or what their patterns came together to create on certain nights. The information wouldn't have been useful to her in her work in any way, and so it would have essentially been a complete waste of time for her to study, but there were beautiful star-lit, quiet moments like this when she wished she'd spent a little more time focusing on the useless things.

"It's pretty out here, huh?" asked Dojima conversationally from the driver's seat. "I guess that's the one nice thing about being out late like this. You get to see the sights….and this is one of the best we've got. Not that we have too many others…" He laughed, and turned a corner, swinging the car around and giving Naoto an even better glimpse of the blinking firmament for a moment.

"It's lovely…" she admitted. "There's nothing like this in the city. I have spent many a wasted evening chasing down a series of slippery culprits, and all that I received at the end was the rankling knowledge of a mission failed, and lungs full of poisonous city smog. This is…refreshing, in a way, even if the end result of our stakeout was much the same as the ones I have just described."

"Yeah," agreed Dojima. "At least we can breathe through it, right?" He drove on for a moment, and then added, "Nanako, Chisato and I used to go out and watch the stars together on the holidays. We'd let her stay up extra late, which made Chisato crazy…but made Nanako smile. Not that she'd manage to keep her eyes open for very long, anyway. Not like she does now, when she's just waiting up for me to come home."

"Maybe you should take her out to see the stars tonight," murmured Naoto. "After all, if she's awake already…"

Dojima just shook his head. "Nah," he mumbled. "It wouldn't feel right anymore."

Naoto frowned at the back of his head. "You live in such a beautiful place, Dojima-san," she told him. "You should enjoy it more."

Unexpectedly, Dojima laughed, although it was more of a low, self deprecatory chuckle. "Yeah?" he asked. "Look who's talking, huh? You're the workaholic. You enjoy it."

"Please," said Naoto abruptly, "stop the car."

"Huh?" asked Dojima.

"I would appreciate it," repeated Naoto, "if you would stop the car."

There was no one else on the road, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence in this town, noted Naoto. It wasn't difficult for Dojima to find a place to pull over. He did stop the car, and then came hurriedly around to the back to open the door for Naoto.

"Don't tell me you're gonna be sick or something," he said, sounding worried. "Hey, come on, my driving's not that bad…these streets are kinda crazy, though…lots of winding roads, and back and forth."

Naoto shook her head. She didn't feel sick at all. Instead, she stepped to the side of the road and stood for a moment, just watching the sky, and feeling the cool, unadulterated night air on her face as she relaxed for the first time that evening into the grip of Inaba's charms.

"Hey, what are you doing, Shirogane?" asked Dojima. "Come on, we have to-!"

"We don't, actually," interrupted Naoto. "With all due respect, Dojima-san, having failed in our efforts, we are now, for the next few minutes at least, at something of a liberty. Perhaps it wouldn't be too remiss if we took just a few moments to enjoy the stars. I fear that we are both guilty of overworking and being unwilling to take any time for ourselves."

"Nanako's waiting," muttered Dojima, although he sounded more uncertain than he had before.

Naoto turned to face him. "Nanako loves you," she said, much more bluntly than she'd ever imagined she'd hear herself speak to a senior detective. "Her insistence on remaining awake every night until you return home is evidence that she worries for your safety and your health. If there is one thing that I did not fail at this evening, sir, it is in realizing that you have taken a great deal on yourself, a great deal that is likely to weigh you down and ultimately injure you in both mind and body in a few years. If Nanako were in the car with us now, I can only assume, and on what I consider to be solid authority, that she would wish for you to take a moment for yourself. Rest and relaxation is, as they say, part of true success. You hurt her by refusing not to hurt yourself."

"Hah." Dojima sighed. "You know…for a very weird, slightly creepy moment there, you sounded a lot like my wife."

Naoto tried nto to let the potentially thrilling undertones of that statement get the better of her cool, collected head. "It sounds to me as though your wife was a very wise woman," she murmured instead.

Eventually, Dojima walked over to stand alongside Naoto, and together they spent a moment having nothing better to do.

"You're just as bad, you know," he told her. "If not worse. Hell, you're a fifteen year old police detective…it's like you've given up on your life already. At least wait until you're my age to do that."

"I will make you a deal, Dojima-san," retorted Naoto. "If you agree to make more concerted efforts at living, then I will have no choice but to do the same. After all, I must have some sort of mature role model after which to mold myself."

Naoto had an excellent deadpan, and it took Dojima several long seconds to respond.

"…You're making fun of me, aren't you?" he asked eventually. "I'm pretty sure you just called me an old man. Watch your step, Shirogane…I'm warning you."

Then he laughed, and Naoto found herself smiling as well, uncertain what the feeling was that was welling up uncontrollably inside her. It felt like sadness and happiness in the same instant, and a twinge of nostalgia that it was impossible for her, who had never been to this place or met this man ever before, to really feel. It was like light had somehow sparked its way through her body and illuminated pieces of her that she hadn't been familiar with before. As the light faded out, Dojima's laughter remained, echoing in the stillness of the Inaba night.

"Is it a deal?" she asked him.

"Fine, fine," muttered Dojima. "Sure. It's a deal."

**Author's Endnote: **And that, as they say, is that. Although I feel that this piece is complete, and that I accomplished what I wanted to, I know that several of you were hoping for more intense Dojima x Naoto romantic action. I must say that I had a lot more fun writing this couple than I expected I would, and I may very well write a sequel to this in the future. Not, however, until I accomplish a few other things. That said, stay tuned if you're interested in more. It will probably happen. Thank you so very much for reading! It makes me smile so.


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